Bitcoin Funds Swell With Another $1.84 Billion in Fresh Cash

Investor interest in digital assets—particularly Bitcoin—has not relented, with $1.84 billion poured into crypto investment products in the last week. Of that dizzying figure, $1.73 billion was focused on “digital gold.”

In fact, last week was the second largest week of inflows into such products on record, according to European digital asset manager CoinShares. The biggest week of inflows was in February when investors plugged $2.45 billion into such funds.

The top factor in driving such huge inflows remains the newly approved and wildly popular spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

According to CoinShares, the vast majority of that cash hit BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Fund—one of the 10 Bitcoin ETFs currently trading in the U.S.  The fund now has over $10 billion in assets under management, according to its website.

Last week, iShares had its best day of trading, when over $1.3 billion in shares swapped hands.

In January, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gave the green light to 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs. 10 are now trading on U.S. stock exchanges. 

Such funds—which the SEC refused to allow for a decade—give investors the ability to put money in Bitcoin without holding it themselves. 

They simply buy shares which track the underlying price of the asset while fund managers—like BlackRock and Fidelity—buy and hold the digital coins. 

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CoinShares added that funds giving investors exposure to Ethereum, the second biggest digital asset, last week received their largest weekly inflows since July 2022—a total of $85 million.

Bitcoin is now fast closing in on its November 2021 all-time high of $69,044. It’s currently priced at $67,348, having shot up by nearly 57% in 30 days, according to CoinGecko. 

 Bitcoin Basics

What is Bitcoin?

—Bitcoin started it all. It was the first cryptocurrency, and it launched an industry that now includes thousands. But who invented it, how does it work, and why is it so important? What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin (BTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. Think of it as a digital token. You can't physically touch or hold Bitcoins, and all Bitcoin transactions are logged on a public, decentralized, immutable ledger. The first official purchase using Bitcoin was for pizza in May 2010. Two pizzas from Papa...

Ethereum is also surging and is now priced at $3,558—a 55% rise over the past 30 days. 

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.